1GTIMELOG(1) GTIMELOG(1)
2
6 gtimelog - minimal time logging application
7
9 gtimelog [options]
10
12 gtimelog provides a time tracking application to allow the user to
13 track what they work on during the day and how long they spend doing
14 it.
15 Here's how it works: every day, when you arrive to work, start up
17 gtimelog and type "arrived". Then start doing some activity (e.g.
18 reading mail, or working on a task). Whenever you stop doing an activ‐
19 ity (either when you have finished it, or when you switch to working on
20 something else), type the name of the activity into the gtimelog
21 prompt. Try to use the same text if you make several entries for an
22 activity (history helps here — just use the up and down arrow keys).
23 The key principle is to name the activity after you've stopped working
24 on it, and not when you've started. Of course you can type the activ‐
25 ity name upfront, and just delay pressing the Enter key until you're
26 done.
27 There are two broad categories of activities: ones that count as work
29 (coding, planning, writing proposals or reports, answering work-related
30 email), and ones that don't (browsing the web for fun, reading personal
31 email, chatting with a friend on the phone for two hours, going out for
32 a lunch break). To indicate which activities are not work related add
33 two asterisks to the activity name:
34 lunch **
36 browsing slashdot **
37 napping on the couch **
38 If you want some activity (or non-activity) to be completely omitted
40 from the reports, use three asterisks:
41 break ***
43 gtimelog displays all the things you've done today, calculates the to‐
45 tal time you spent working, and the total time you spent "slacking".
46 It also advises you how much time you still have to work today to get 8
47 hours of work done, and how much time is left just to have spent a
48 workday at the office (the number of hours in a day is configurable).
49 There are three basic views: one shows all the activities in chronolog‐
51 ical order, with starting and ending times; another groups all entries
52 with the same title into one activity and just shows the total dura‐
53 tion; and a third one groups all entries from the same categories into
54 one line with the total duration.
55 At the end of the day you can send off a daily report by choosing Re‐
57 port... from the menu. You can select a date and a date range
58 (day/week/month) and preview the report directly in the gtimelog window
59 before sending it. (Actual sending requires a working local MTA, such
60 as Postfix, to be installed and configured, which is outside the scope
61 of this document.)
62 If you make a mistake and type in the wrong activity name, or just for‐
64 get to enter an activity, don't worry. gtimelog stores the time log in
65 a simple plain text file ~/.gtimelog/timelog.txt (or ~/.lo‐
66 cal/share/gtimelog/timelog.txt). Every line contains a timestamp and
67 the name of the activity that was finished at the time. All other
68 lines are ignored, so you can add comments if you want to — just make
69 sure no comment begins with a timestamp. You do not have to worry
70 about gtimelog overwriting your changes — gtimelog always appends en‐
71 tries at the end of the file, and does not keep the log file open all
72 the time. You do have to worry about overwriting changes made by
73 gtimelog with your editor — make sure you do not enter any activities
74 in gtimelog while you have timelog.txt open in a text editor.
75
77 --version
78 Show program's version number and exit.
79 -h, --help
81 Show this help message and exit.
82 --debug
84 Show debug information.
85
87 gtimelog uses XDG-compliant config and data directories by default
88 (~/.config/gtimelog, ~/.local/share/gtimelog). For backwards compati‐
89 bility, if ~/.gtimelog exists, it will be used instead.
90 ~/.gtimelog/timelog.txt
91 ~/.local/share/gtimelog/timelog.txt
92 Activity log file. Each line contains an ISO-8601 timestamp
94 (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS) followed by a ":" and a space, followed by the
95 activity name. Lines are sorted chronologically. Blank lines sepa‐
96 rate days. Lines starting with # are comments.
97 ~/.gtimelog/tasks.txt
98 ~/.local/share/gtimelog/tasks.txt
99 Tasks to be shown in the task pane. Each line is either "task name"
101 or "category: task name", lines starting with a # are comments.
102 ~/.gtimelog/sentreports.log
103 ~/.local/share/gtimelog/sentreports.log
104 A CSV file listing reports that have been sent. The columns are:
106 timestamp, report kind (daily/weekly/monthly), report date, recipi‐
107 ent's email address.
108 ~/.gtimelog/gtimelogrc
109 ~/.config/gtimelog/gtimelogrc
110 Legacy configuration file. If it exists when gtimelog 0.11 starts
112 for the first time, settings from it will be migrated to gsettings.
113
115 Marius Gedminas <mgedmin@gedmin.as>
116
118 Marius Gedminas
1190.11 2017-12-16 GTIMELOG(1)